The prices put attendance out of the question, but I was interested to see a list of competitions. I have a lot of writing that could do with a polish and an outing.

I sent off for a booklet with winning entries for last year's competitions first, half afraid I might be put off by the quality of entries. I was at first, but the booklet itself was good value. Apart from the entries, there was a transcript of the plenary address by John Bowen and a concluding article by Vincent McInery. Both very inspirational.


I've settled for entering a short story competition, partly because the prize is a week's writing course in Mallorca. I've chosen one I wrote in 2005 which has gone through many a polishing. Right up to the posting I was finding words to change. Even the entry fee was steep, I thought, at £9, so I restricted myself to just the one.


Well, at least I suppose there's not long to wait, unlike when I used to send stories to women's magazines and wondered for weeks and months what might have happened to them


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It’s the same every time. Blank screen. Blank mind. Blank except for one thought: I don’t know how to do this.

But the feeling is particularly strong this time. I’m starting something completely new. Not just a new book in an existing series.

It’s going to be a completely different kind of book, too, from anything I’ve previously written. Different is good. But scary, too.

This is going to be a contemporary novel, unlike the last four books I’ve written, which were all set in the nineteenth century. It’s also going to be set in England, not Russia, as they were.

It’s true that I have written a contemporary novel before. But the project I’m about to start work on is going to be very different from that. It will be a crime novel with a strong police procedural element. That’s something new for me, though obviously I’m not the first writer to attempt it.

In some ways, its present day setting, in my home country, should make it easier to write. That’s what people tell me. But somehow, I don’t think so. For one thing, I’ll be without the emotional comfort blanket of my research. All those books of background history to read, the memoirs, biographies, nineteenth century Russian novels: how will I manage without them?

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These are my new boots. They are also my sale bargain of the year and they are a thing of beauty...Don’t you agree? I stalked them until they came down to half price in the sale, then I marched in with my credit card and like a certain Disney princess’s ugly sister, was determined to make them fit. The thing is, they don’t really. Fit, that is. Well, they sort of do but I have to zip them all up at ankle level, then haul them up over my lardy calves.

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One of the things which is being really interesting about teaching Creative Writing for the Open University is that, in the nature of things, how work is assessed and discussed on such a course can't be completely free-form: it must be fair across all kinds of writing and students, and it must make it easy to be consistent from student to student, tutor to tutor, and year to year. And it must also be useful to the student: they need to be able to look at the criteria, and understand why they got the mark they did, and what they could do to get a better one. I'm extremely used to giving detailed comments on what's working and not working in a piece of writing, but I'm sure I couldn't have distilled that into general descriptors which fit all genres (the course studies short fiction, sections of long fiction, free verse, formal verse, life writing in prose or poetry), all subjects and all kinds of writing. But some very clever people have come up with 30 or 40 word descriptors which mean I really can put a piece into one of eight bands, and then probably say whether it's in the lower, middle or upper part of the band. In combination with my comments on the script itself, and the longish (several hundred words) remarks that go on the form along with the grades, it seems to me that it really is possible to accommodate the tension between the subjective and the objective.

And then on a forum, the subject of editorial reports came up. Someone had had their novel critiqued, and the editor suggested pretty major changes, on the grounds that X and Y and Z are what this kind of book has to do, to sell into its market.

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Oh no! The Germans have invaded!


This is the first line of a child’s review of a novel set in Holland in World War Two. In the eight years since I read it, it has stuck in my mind, partly because it makes me smile (something about the sheer understatement of Oh no! as a response to a Nazi invasion), but also because it makes me think, about what makes a story work.

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Sadly, I have just discovered, through the medium of writewords, that a good friend has died. Died in fact two years ago. I feel moved to somehow commemorate the fact in verse. Will post what transpires...

Christina Nassif in the skirt-swishing lead role seemed at times lost among the 100-strong cast and her voice was not strong enough for the venue. Elizabeth Atherton was outstanding as Micaela, the girl-next-door admirer of Don Jose. With mousy plaited hair and dull clothes, her subdued gestures and posture held attention and earned her the loudest final applause. Kevin Greenlaw was handsome in the fairly slight role of Escamillo and John Hudson was a stocky and sympathetic Don Jose, also cheered.


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So I’ve stopped thinking about doors.
Now I’m thinking about spotlights.

An obsession with interior design? Yes - at least in terms of inner furniture.

I’m thinking about visibility and what it means for that most mole-like, reclusive and solitary creature, The Writer.

As a member of several on-line writers’ groups, I’m continually exposed to writers who are succeeding – being signed by agents, getting published, giving readings, winning competitions, winning prizes. And whilst I’m thrilled for them - and inspired by them – it also serves to emphasise my own relative invisibility

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After an absence of more than seven years, I've been drawn back to writewords and have paid up for another year. I don't like the new 'only 1 submission every 2 days rule' - I've got a lot of catching up to do and am itching to share stuff.